Electromagnetic waves may be transferred from place to place through a conductor. In wired transmission, the conductor is usually a wire or other solid substance. In wireless transmission, the conductor is usually an ambient substance, such as air, water, etc. In wireless connections a transmitter is usually used to transfer a wave and a receiver to receive a wave. A transitive combines the functions of both transmitter and receiver in one system. A transmitter typically converts electrical energy into a signal, which is then broadcast via an antenna to a receiver's antenna. Repeaters, middle stations, etc. May be used as intermediates in the transmission to sustain the integrity of the transmitted wave.
The electrical energy input into a transmitter usually is modulated into a basic transmission or carrier signal by overlaying some intelligence upon the energy—speech, data, etc.—in the form of an information signal, and the receiver typically demodulates the modulated carrier signal, once received, into a copy of the initial intelligence sent by the transmitter.
In order to accomplish their function, transmitters, receivers, and tranceivers are comprised of various building block components. The information signal, for example, may be generated or modulated by one or more transducers, such as a microphone. It may also be generated by a modulator, such as an analog modem. The modulation of the information signal onto the carrier signal may be done by a mixer and the energy or carrier wave itself is usually generated by an oscillator. An amplifier is usually used at one or more places in the transmitter circuitry to boost the signal strength, to provide power to active components, etc. Similarly, one or more filters are usually used as well, to clean up the input signal, the outputted signal, etc. An antenna is used to broadcast the signal, and a power supply will supply power as needed.
All of these system components may introduce delay into the propagation of a signal through the system, which may cause distortion in the signal outputted from the processing system. In some systems, aspects of the electromagnetic wave, such as amplitude and phase information, may be processed along different paths and with difference components. Some of these components may be analog in nature and some digital. Because of this, there may be a difference in delay, or differential delay, between each aspect of the electromagnetic wave when they are recombined, which may cause unwanted distortion in the processed output signal.
Because of drawbacks in conventional systems, it would be desirable to provide more efficient and precise methods and articles of manufacture processing electromagnetic waves in this manner.